New Collectors is pleased to present, immortal flub, Ian Myers’ first solo exhibition in New York and the last exhibition to take place at the gallery’s Henry Street location. The exhibition features five 12x9 inch tempera on panel paintings that mark a new period in the artist's abstract painting practice. Incredibly layered and intricately crafted, the works in this exhibition recall religious iconography while remaining aesthetically abstract.

Starting with a smooth surface of marble dust ground on panel, Myers uses egg tempera as his primary medium. Originally used to depict early Christian icons, the medium and intimate scale of his work evoke religious imagery and mysticism. His process is also driven by a devotion, not to any higher power, but to the practice of painting itself. Myers writes, “I’m aligning the intuitive act of painting (and looking) with a kind of religious devotion. Not only to suggest faith (in painting) to carry on in the face of doubt (why painting), but to make tangible the simultaneous feelings of admiration for and alienation from the kind of devotion that [religious] icons depict.”

Myers thinks of his works as a kind of acheiropoieta, or icons made miraculously. Historically, these types of icons introduce a sort of paradox. They ask their audience to look past facture in order to perceive it as a divine event, meanwhile, it is nonetheless an earthly object with material evidence of its making. Similarly, as if to liken them to a divine event, surprise is central to Myers’ process; he never knows how or when the final image will appear until it is revealed to him.

Ian Myers (b. 1994 — Albany, NY) is a painter and teacher based in Brooklyn, NY. He earned his BFA at the Cooper Union School of Art where he received the Eleanor Gay Lee Foundation Scholar award. He is currently an MFA candidate at Hunter College.